Writing
Raskolnikov's Dream
On the dream of the horse. A child's empathy inverts into the mob's amorality, and the inner voice is silenced. The silence is only temporary, and when it returns, there will be a price.
The dream chronicles Raskolnikov's fall from an empathetic child who does not understand the cruelty of the mob to a man who fears he will end up like the horse and thus identifies with the mob, ultimately becoming a more menacing version of the mob.
As a child, Raskolnikov does not understand the cruel treatment of the horse by the callous men. He empathizes with the helpless animal, overburdened and beaten mercilessly, while the crowd remains indifferent to its pain, even finding amusement in the brutality. When asking his father for an explanation, he only gets an unsatisfactory "because they are drunk" as an answer.
Yet, as Raskolnikov battles poverty in St. Petersburg, the symbols in the dream take on a new meaning. Just like the horse, he finds himself bearing a burden more than he can shoulder. Just like Mikolka, his mother's letter adds to the relentless expectation despite his limited means, already crumbling with the shame from his menial work. The absurdity he witnessed as a child has now become his reality.
It is thus no coincidence this childhood nightmare resurfaces after his encounter with Marmeladov, a man who represents the path of complete failure that could await Raskolnikov without intervention. The broken man's pathetic reveling in his own humiliation triggers Raskolnikov's primal fear of such degradation: he can pity the horse but he can never bring himself to pity himself. To avoid that fate, Raskolnikov's perspective fully inverts; he rejects the suffering horse, he despises the horse's weakness, he understands the mob.
This mind metamorphosis sets the stage for the fatal act. Raskolnikov now does not just understand the mob but has surpassed them in his own capacity for evil. Raskolnikov can now see the same dream with two antipodal perspectives: from childhood empathy to adult amorality. These two psychological states cannot coexist with each other, and it perhaps will break Raskolnikov. The inner child's voice is only temporarily silenced, and when it comes back, there will be a price to be paid.